In brief

The transport sector plays a central role in a modern economy. Mobility of goods (raw materials, semi-manufactured and finished products) and people (e.g. apprentices, employees, travellers, consumers) is required in the first place for the division of labour to function and for value added to be created in all economic sectors. Statistical information on transport provides an important basis for entrepreneurial decisions and transport policies.

The statistics of transport services are one of the focal areas of official transport statistics. They record the quantities of goods carried and the transport performance (expressed in tonne-kilometres) according to a breakdown by product and region. The goods carried are shown in terms of gross weight (including packaging). The figures on transport performance additionally take into account the distances over which the goods are moved.

Passenger transport includes public passenger transport by bus/coach, rail and air as well as transport by private motor vehicles (private motorised transport), by bicycle or on foot. Official statistics mainly collect and present information on public passenger transport.

Enterprises engaged in transport activities on inland waterways, by air and rail as well as in commercial passenger transport and goods transport by road are required to provide information every year or at intervals of several years. They supply data in particular on the transport services performed, the employees involved in transport activities, on turnover or revenue from the relevant mode of transport (except for goods transport by road and rail and long-distance passenger transport by rail), on the stock of vehicles and on the infrastructure (railways). The survey units are the kind-of-activity units engaged in transport activities, irrespectively of what the enterprise's main activity is.

Traffic accidents

Among traffic accidents, a distinction is made between road, rail and air traffic accidents.
Traditionally, for the statistics of road traffic accidents, a distinction between four basic terms has been applied: accidents, persons involved, casualties and causes of accidents. In addition, the users of vehicles involved in accidents are counted.
Accidents are distinguished according to the severity of the consequences, e.g. accidents involving personal injury, serious accidents involving only material damage and other accidents involving material damage. Accidents involving personal injury are those where persons were injured or killed, irrespective of the level of material damage. Serious accidents involving only material damage are those where the cause of the accident was an administrative offence (administrative fine) or a criminal offence in the context of road traffic participation.

In FOCUS / 2014-11-11

An agreement has still not been reached in the current wage conflict between the national operator Deutsche Bahn and the German train drivers' union (GDL). The train drivers have gone on strike several times since the conflict began - millions of passengers were affected by the work stoppages.

Longer-distance and commuter trains transported approximately 2.6 billion people in 2013. Most of the passengers (2.5 billion) used the trains to cover shorter distances. Compared with a year earlier, the number of passengers declined by 2.3% in local transport. In contrast, the number of passengers using long-distance transport services remained unchanged at 131 million.

The train drivers' strike hit not only passenger transport services but also rail freight transport. In 2013 a total of approximately 374 million tonnes of goods were transported by rail. By contrast, the volume of goods carried by road amounted to about 3.4 billion tonnes. There also are considerable differences when it comes to transport performance: for instance, road freight transport accounted for approximately 70% (453 billion tonne kilometres) of the entire transport performance in Germany. Rail freight transport accounted for 17% (113 billion tonne kilometres).